China-based pharmaceutical CDMO WuXi STA has completed the acquisition of a drug product manufacturing facility in Couvet, Switzerland, from Bristol-Myers Squibb, as announced earlier in the year. The site is WuXi STA’s first in Europe. It makes tablets and capsules.

Through this transaction, WuXi STA has increased its global presence to eight R&D and manufacturing sites across Asia, North America and Europe, including a pharmaceutical clinical and commercial manufacturing complex on a 78-hectare campus at Middletown, Delaware, that was announced in early July.

Nippon Shokubai has established a new Green Innovation department within the Innovation & Business Development division. This, the company said, will integrate sustainable projects with research planning and development organisations related to energy and resource use. Its key responsibilities are to develop:

* Manufacturing methods from bio-based raw materials of the firm’s core products of acrylic acid and ethylene oxide

* CO₂ capture and conversion technology

* New technologies for ammonia manufacturing and utilisation

Thomas Swan & Co. has completed a joint venture transaction in large-scale graphene production with Canadian-based graphite firm Mason Graphite. Black Swan Graphene (BSG) will be based in Québec, Canada, and will seek to penetrate industrial markets with low-cost graphene. CEO Harry Swan and Michael Edwards, business director for the Advanced Materials division, will join the BSG board.

Chloe Kirby of Blue Label Labs discusses how two new digital technologies are changing our industry

Like many others, the chemical industry is facing a slew of challenges in 2021 and beyond. Apart from the post-pandemic recovery, to which every industry is adjusting, chemical companies are seeking a better way forward as everyone rethinks business practices and operations. A major shift is occurring to manufacturing and production in the chemical industry and others adjacent.

Two workers have been confirmed dead after an explosion at Chempark Leverkusen in Germany at around 09.40 on 27 July and a subsequent fire in the tank farm of the Bürrig disposal centre that sent a blanket of smoke across the city and was heard 40 kilometres away.

Draslovka, a multi-family-owned Czech speciality chemicals firm, has agreed to acquire the Mining Solutions business of Chemours for $520 million, or 10 x EBITDA in 2020. This came shortly after its agreement to buy Sasol’s sodium cyanide business $101.7 million. CEO Pavel Bruzek said that the deals were “highly synergistic” with each other.

Three South Korean conglomerates have announced major investments into battery materials in the past month, in anticipation of projected market growth from under €30 billion/year in 2021 to nearer €75 billion in 2026. SK Materials is to build a lithium-silicon battery materials, while Posco Chemical will build a cathode materials plant and LG Chem has even bigger, longer-term plans.